• SERPENT-DOVES
By PHYLLIS BOTTOME
WHAT we need today in every country, but specially for the moral building-up of the German nation, are a race I can only describe as " Serpent-Doves." All countries possess doves, and the British Isles are particularly rich in them—such as our many Quakers and pacifists—people who go in for saving victims at any and every personal cost except that of fighting what produces victims. Serpent-doves fight those who make victims, and then try to cure their defeated antagonists of their fighting instincts. A perfect model of the serpent-dove in action is Madame Chiang Kai-shek appearing from the sky in the mountain fastness of her husband's kidnappers with small Christmas presents (no doubt useful ones) dangling from her hands. A dove might so have flown to her endangered mate ; but only a serpent-dove would have flown away a few days later with the Generalissimo under one wing and his captors under the other. Eleanor Roosevelt is just such another specimen ; she combines warm-hearted factual common sense with. a certain power of come-back if anyone tries to fool her, and she has often made her enemies the permanent prisoners of her spirit.
This is the secret of the whole problem of " teaching Germans." We can teach the Germans nothing that we are not already practising. A Nazi,—and most Germans were Nazi if they are not so still, and once recovered from their future beating would become so again— is ninety per cent. Nazi. How can they be cured or taught by anyone who is not at least ninety per cent. Democrat or Christian? Unfortunately, only few people interested in education have as yet grasped this fact, that there is no way of teaching any human being, however young, except by presenting before him something inviting. This is specially true of morals, which are not in them- selves inviting. Great Britain is not without such men and women,' but they are never to be found where " yes men " flourish ; where people prefer Mammon to God ; or their own pleasure to removing the sufferings of others.
Those who are allowed passports to a defeated Germany should be at least ninety per cent. Christians or Democrats. Their demo- cracy and their anti-anti-Semitism (which is a fundamental part of it) should be unshakeable. They should not be chosen from either the pure serpent or the pure dove strata, and the fewer officials the better. The perfect missionary (had he survived the second death he died for his country) would have been Richard Hillary. Here was a boy, quite as tough as any Nazi, battle-scarred, and a con- vinced Democrat ; a boy as dynamic and Elizabethan as the Prime Minister he sceptically adored ; a thinker and a sportsman of the first ordcr.
A committee could be formed from well-known specimens of serpent-doves now to prepare bands that can usefully be employed on technical jobs in Germany after the war. "Be ye wise as serpents . and harmless as doves " was perhaps the only description—and that indirect—that the Founder of the Christian religion gave of Himself.
But it does not follow that this definition is true of the Christian of today. Some are pure dove, and look—and often act—no farther than their own noses. Some are pure serpent, and their wisdom is not by itself enough to reach and release the broken-hearted. Our committee of group leaders should be both. The chief characteristics of serpent-doves are, first, that they are working for the future as
well as for the present, so that they are universal in their judgement
of what is best for all men ; secondly, they would take every step to relieve immediate suffering uncontroversially and in a spirit of pure compassion ; thirdly, they would assert and support their standard of right and wrong wherever necessary and display it in all their actions. •
If we send less than 90 per cent. Democrats or Christians we are going to get back potential Nazis—any material less than our best and strongest will act 's mere putty for the infinitely astute Nazis they are going to come across. Nazis want a third and better war and know how to get it.• Nazis have been trained and equipped as Nazis for ten or more years ; and it was a training which will be hard to shake.
All that the chosen pupils of the serpent-dove leaders need to have is'(r) A working knowledge of German. (2) Technical ability in a branch of knowledge specialy needed by a devastated and defeated Germany. (3) Not one drop of -anti-Semitism. (4) Prac- tising faith in their own democracy. The Quakers should, of course, go as usual because, although they are unfortunately pure dove, they are needed when there is such an overflow of victims. Besides, there is no humbug about them. They are real doves. A Nazi once said to one of them ministering to those who had been tortured and freed from a concentration camp before the war, " Of course, we think you are fools—but if I were ever in any such trouble, God send me such a fool." The occasion is now likely to arise.
There are two snags that come up against the good hearts of our people in this German problem. One is put by those who feel that Germans should be let off what they have mercilessly inflicted on others—for their souls' sake, and even more for ours. I cannot wholly share this view, though I would avoid all vindictiveness. I believe the Germans have a hard, practical sense, due to their habitual militarism, and have ceased to learn by imagination what they now can only learn by experience. I therefore should provide them with that experience. I should let them see what a destroyed country looks like when it is one's own. (2) I cannot believe myself, having watched the Germans for nine years preparing for this war, that we had a chance to win it except by 'command of the air. Further, America and ourselves had no armies ; our Navy would have been sunk withoat air-cover ; and bombing gave our armies the chance to finish their training and equipment, as it gives them now the chance to carry this training and equipment into effect. After the fall of France there were no armies except those of Germany and Russia. The R.A.F. and the sacrifices of the British Navy gave us time to save the spirit of man ; only just time ; and if it had not been for Russia, not quite enough. It is true that we are seeing the highest dreams of men perishing under the fire or`our own bombs ; but we had to choose between giving up Pisa and her sister cities and giving up the spirit of man ; the price of war goes up every time. I can understand that people who did net live in Germany, and are not accustomed to having their heads turned regularly by War Lords, did not realise what was happening in Germany then ; but they should realise it now, because otherwise it will happen--or something like it—again, almost anywhere.
The direction of a people's soul can often best be discovered in their permanent songs. " It is such a pity," one of my German friends said to me, " that you British are so arrogant. Fancy singing such a provocative song as ' Britons never, never shall be slaves! '" " But is it very provocative " I asked her,. " not to consent to be a slave? Would it not be more provocative to try to enslave us? Sometimes we think your song ' Deutschland—Deutschland fiber Alles ' is rather provocative, too! " "Oh! " she said, looking shocked and pained,'" but that is quite different—that is a German song, only for ourselves—you do not need to sing it! "
But the fact remains that we were the first great country to stop
the slave trade, and that the German soul has again and again turned aggressively to climb . over the heads of other nations. It is our danger that we are a very compassionate people, who refuse to study emotion or link it with logic, and so are often at inconvenient points in our career overcome by kind and unpractical delusions. We should make one of these mistakes if we hesitated to let life- -in the shape of the war they produced—carry out its complete and cruel logic upon the German people. But we cannot expect that ruin, sorrow, pain and horror in the German soul will .by themselves make them change their goal. Grief is not a virtue. Changes of heart come quite differently ; they come because a person sees that the path he has chosen is not that on which he can expect success, and that he can expect success, plus the friendly com- panionship of his fellows, upon an opposite path.
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